Florence's Group

Florence is a 42-year-old mother of six and a businesswoman. She buys and sells sisal; her husband is a dryland farmer. Her trade business faces the challenge of price fluctuations at the market due to varying demand, and sometimes she has to sell her sisal for no profit. Florence says, "My favorite part of KOMAZA is how the future appears promising because the trees grow very fast." With the proceeds from her KOMAZA tree farm, she plans to pay her children's education fees and expand her business.

Additional Information

About Komaza

KOMAZA is a social enterprise founded to convert Africa’s drylands into productive family farms in the eastern part of Kenya. The organization equips smallholder farmers with the supplies and training they need to plant fast-growing and sustainable eucalyptus or melia trees on their unused or underutilized land. In addition to generating income for farmers and their families, KOMAZA's sustainable farming practices help to offset deforestation and provide a stable, affordable source of fuel.

Please note that this loan term is for 10 years. KOMAZA works with farmers over the course of this time period to help them grow healthy and regenerative trees that are then sold as wood commodities. This loan will cover the upfront cost of seeds, fertilizers, and KOMAZA’s staff time needed to support the farmer over the course of the loan term, including multiple harvest cycles.

This model generates years of income for the farmers’ families and creates a sustainable wood supply for local markets. Kiva lenders’ flexible, risk-tolerant capital enables KOMAZA to offer affordable financing to farmers, and to scale faster as an organization to impact more people. Repayments for this loan will come from revenues generated by wood sales, and profits from harvested trees are split equally between the farmer and KOMAZA.

See the story of Ruth and Raphael, KOMAZA farmers, here:

Wach a video about the organization’s work in the field here:

This Kiva loan will be used to provide borrowers with needed goods or services, as opposed to cash or financial credit.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.